When I Started to Decay
by Sake Bottle Swing
Summary: Not all friendships start out easily. How did Haru's hatred towards Yuki change, and does their friendship run deeper? T for language, possible shounen ai or yaoi in the future.
1. Chapter 1

Wilkommen to my first serious fruits basket fic! This is just the beginning of Haru and Yuki's friendship, or hatred as it started out as being. This may or may not be continued. If it is, there might be possible shounen ai in the process. However, I'm trying to make this rather unconventional, so it's not going to be a lot of "Haru chases Yuki" sort of deal. I'm not sure yet. Regardless….here's how this all began.

Disclaimer: I don't own fruits basket. And I never will.

Since as far back as I could remember, I hated being the Ox. I had the worst luck of anyone in the entire family. Because since I was born, everyone told me how I had been used by the rat. The scheming, conniving rat who thought only of himself.

I hated Yuki the moment I first heard of him. It wasn't until I was about three that I first actually met him—before then I was too young to meet him and he was "too delicate" to have playmates. Even in our first meeting though, I regarded him with an uncharacteristic coldness. I wouldn't share. I wouldn't let him use the blocks. I think I even hit him. The little brat didn't cry, though, he just looked at me with sadness in his eyes. Little did I realize that he would continue that habit of suppressing his feelings for the next thirteen years.

Even worse than Yuki were my parents. Most of the parents of children in the Zodiac were at least somewhat ashamed of their children, but it was even worse to have given birth to the Ox. Before I even opened my eyes, I was big, slow, and stupid. And that stuck with me from an early age. Even now, I don't eat a whole lot of food for fear that I will turn into that loathsome cow. But getting back to the subject, my parents were horrible. They sucked as parents. It was obvious that they envied Yuki's mother and father, and wished they had Yuki as their son. Yuki, who was speaking in full sentences since he was three. Sure, they were mostly, "Thank you for lunch, Sohma-san" and "May I have a cookie?" but still, they were sentences. I had a select few words for any situation, and I often confused my parents as to what I really wanted. They never really knew that all I wanted was love.

As horrible as it sounds, I eventually got used to the coldness I received from my parents. What I never got over was the lack of attention. Whenever the Sohmas got together, I was excluded. Yuki would talk to the adults in his cute little way and tilt his cute little head and be so fucking cute it made you _sick_, and I sat in the corner and pretended to play. Really, I was watching them—and waiting for someone to call me over so I could act cute, because I thought I was pretty cute. All children are cute, even when they are the year of the Ox.

No one ever called me. So those days I started to cry, cry as much as I could and wait for someone to pay _any_ attention to me. Nothing happened. Ever. I don't understand how parents could sit around and ignore a little child of four, sitting in a corner and _crying_ his eyes out because Mommy and Daddy don't want him as their son. He is a shame and a burden. The ox should never have been born.

The night my Black side was born was when I was about five or six. It was another family get-together, and as usual Yuki was entertaining the adults. But this time, he was actually _sitting_ at the grown-ups table. Sohma children didn't sit at the grown-up table until they hit adolescence, but Yuki, being the Rat, was special. So goddamned special. Anyway, I looked at him, sitting at the table, talking to the adults and being charming when he looked over at me and made the worst mistake of his life—he _smiled_ at me.

It was an innocent enough gesture, but all the weight of the lack of attention, the favoritism for another child, everything in my five or six years crashed down upon me like a boulder. And I cried. No, that's not quite accurate, I sobbed. I cried as hard and as loudly as I could, wails that nearly shook the paper door and certainly got me attention. I was waiting for that golden moment, when my mother would come over and scoop me up in her arms, which always smelled nice even though she hated me, and say, "Oh, my little Hatsuharu, what's wrong, sweetie?". She didn't even come close. She turned around in her chair, stared straight at me, and said, "Hatsuharu, stop making a scene and be quiet."

I lost all control and decorum I'd ever had. I began to kick, punch, rip, and destroy everything in my sight, while screaming the sentence I knew best, "I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU! I HATE YOU!" My mother sighed wearily and grabbed me forcefully by the arm and yelled at me to stop, but it was impossible to reach me now. I gave into hateful voices that had haunted me since…since I was born. She screamed at me again, and this time I whirled around to face her and I hit her. I punched my own mother and screamed, "I HATE YOU! YOU'RE THE WORST MOMMY IN THE WORLD!"

Time froze in that moment as she reeled from the blow. Maybe her skin was weak, maybe the angle was just right, but soon a bruise began to bloom on her eye. She shoved me away, turned to my father and said, "We can't keep him anymore. He has to go". As if I was some sort of farm animal.

The silence that followed this was broken by the sound of Yuki half-sliding, half-falling off of his booster seat and walking slowly over to me. He looked at me with those bright eyes and whispered, "Haru…"

"What do_ you_ want, dirty rat?" I spat at him. I was never to address Yuki this way, or anyone. I was far too angry to care. He went unaffected by my statement, and repeated my name. "Haru…"

I lashed out at him just as I did with my mother. This gained quite a reaction. Yuki's mother screamed and snatched her son away from me while shrieking horrible insults directed at my parents. The other parents also started yelling, and pointing, and staring at me with these eyes, eyes that said, "He's uncontrollable. What have you done? Look how dangerous he is." Yuki was the only one who seemed to show any compassion. He wriggled in his mother's grasp, saying, "Mama, Mama, Haru's in trouble. He's sad, he needs a friend. He has no friends."

"It's no wonder he has no friends, the beast!" his mother retorted. "I don't want you to ever see him again!" I merely stood, bewildered, and felt the emotional pain ooze throughout me as in a blur; I was taken from the house and shipped off to a dojo where my hatred could be controlled.

Nothing could help me with that anger. Sure, I became a lot stronger after my intial clumsiness, but even with this new strength the Sohmas never accepted me. It wasn't until I was…nine? Ten? That I even bothered to talk to Yuki.

I found him sitting in a window seat in one of the far rooms of the main house. I didn't even perceive how alone he was until much later. All of that anger and hate spilled out at once as I screamed at him.

"It's all your fault!"

"You're the reason I'm slow and stupid!"

"You're the reason why everyone hates me! Why my parents ignore me! Why nobody will ever accept me!"

I screamed and yelled at him for I don't know how long, and he just sat there and took it with a surprised look on his face. Once I'd finally ceased in screaming at him, he looked off into the distance and spoke with carefully chosen words.

"Are you really slow? Are you really stupid? You are very smart, Haru-kun. You could see through grown-ups and how they play favorites. Most kids don't even notice that. But is it true; that you are slow, and stupid? Is it real?"

I waited for my breath to level out while I digested these words. You see, the easiest way to destroy hate is to really think about why you're angry. As soon as I found the reason—the _real _reason—I was so angry, everything disappeared, and all I felt was guilt and shame. It wasn't Yuki's fault that I was ignored and rejected. It wasn't mine, either. I was "slow" and "stupid" because of the superficial judgments of the adults who surrounded me.

"No…." I muttered hoarsely. "I'm not slow. I'm not stupid. I can do math and I can spell and I can read and I know that I was really mean to you, Yuki. I'm sorry….I'm sorry!" I threw myself onto the windowsill and began to cry in earnest, cry for someone other than myself. The rat looked surprised again at my outburst, but smiled and placed his hand over mine. He reached down into an awkward sort of embrace and gently tilted my chin up. "Yuki…" I whispered through big, sloppy, ten-year-old's tears. There was probably snot all over my face. He smiled gently at me and said three words that changed my life forever.

"Let's start again."

Reviews would be well loved! Please let me know what you think and whether or not I should continue!


	2. Chapter 2

Here's the second installment of "When I Started to Decay". Considerably shorter than the first, and it's from Yuki's point of view. By the way, Akito the freaky she-male is a male in this story. Gender subject to change in other tales.

Being a child, as young and stupid as I was, I was completely and blissfully oblivious to Haru's "hatred" of me. I use that term lightly because if he truly hated me, then he would never have come to me, crying, as he did. Although, to be honest, my ideas about what hate is and what love is have been warped to the point where they are inseparable.

My parents said that they loved me, and I suppose that was true when we were in the company of other Sohmas. They smiled at me, laughed mirthfully when I spoke in childish babble and my father hugged me lovingly. Yet outside of that company, our relationship deteriorated like rice paper in water. I was ignored. I was yelled at screamed at, and hit. I cried afterwards and was reprimanded for my tears. What I never understood was the presence of the stranger in our house. There was this boy who lived there, and from my earliest memories (since I was around two) I could tell he was far older than I was. He had beautiful long and silver hair that I longed to grasp between my chubby infant fingers. I didn't know that he was my brother until far too late, when my parents' "love" had so worn him down that he could no longer feel anything for me. When he pushed me away when I needed him most, he was in reality saying, "I have to fend for myself. There's no way I can live here anymore". I didn't realize that at the time, and the scars left from his rejection of me have not fully healed.

And then there was Akito. I can hardly even talk about him without feeling physical pain invading my body. Surprisingly, even as a child I could endure corporal punishment or "games" as he liked to call them, without being terribly fazed. His mind games are what have had this incredible impact on my mind and keep me closed to everyone around me. I can't tell you the number of times he whispered...I can't tell you right now. I'm sorry. Maybe later you'll hear about it.

Haru wasn't aware of what was going on at first. Since we didn't even become friends until I was ten years old, he knew nothing of what happened in the few years before. But as we grew closer, he caught on to the fact that I wasn't acting like normal ten year-old boys. The smile I'd given him that day when he screamed his heart out to me hadn't been give in months. One day he confronted me about it.

"Yuki?" the nine-year old asked as we sat on his bed, talking about cars and manga and other ten-year old boy things. He insisted that Power Rangers was the coolest thing in the world, and started to convert me.

"What is it, Haru?" I replied while skimming through a Power Rangers comic book. Personally, I liked the green one.

"Why are you so sad all the time? You used to smile sometimes but you're sad a lot. I want to know why."

I paused, hesitant to answer the question. Would Haru understand what Akito was doing? Would he get that I was being abused by the head of the family, who supposedly loved me?

"Akito...he always says stuff that is scary. Stuff that makes me feel bad and lonely. He says stuff like...like 'Nobody loves you. Not even your own mommy.' I told him that made me scared but then he hit me and said we were going to play a game."

"A game?" A white eyebrow raised inquisitively.

"I lost. See?" And I rolled up my sleeve to show the Indian burns on my upper arm.

"Ouchies! Yuki, why do you play with him?"

"Because my mommy said for me to, even though Akito scares me."

"Yuki...does your mommy love you?"

I became indignant then. "Of course she does! Everyone has a mommy that loves them."

"Rin's mommy doesn't love her."

"Well, my mommy loves me. I know that 'cause she told me."

"But...a maid told me that a mommy who loves their kid would never ever want to see them hurt, even if they had to be hurt. But they sometimes let them get hurt 'cause they need to learn something." He sighed heavily and played around with his bangs. "My mommy doesn't love me."

"'Course she does! I bet your mommy loves you more than anyone else's mommy in the whole wide world! How could she not love you?"

He muttered "She loves you. Not me."

"Don't say stuff like that! It makes me feel bad now come on, let's just forget the whole thing."

I'd forgotten I was dealing with the Ox and how incredibly stubborn his personality could be. "No, it's true, I bet she's saying it right now. She loves you more!" His eyes flared and I could see his Black personality creeping through. "You don't understand at all! No one loves me!" He started to fume and twist the bed covers violently. Suddenly, he lashed out, grabbing the comic from my hands and ripped it to pieces. "I hate her! I hate my mommy! I hate that she loves you so much! Why doesn't she just take YOU home!"

"Haru!" I cried. "Haru, Haru don't fight! I'm sorry! I'm sorry please, please stop!"

I didn't even realize that I'd curled into a little ball in order to protect myself. He stopped right away and looked at me, as though he couldn't figure out why this ten year-old boy was curled on his bed, tears collected in the corners of his eyes. "Yuki, don't cry. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it. I really didn't-aw, I'm sorry. Here, kiss and make it better?" I looked up at him from my fetal position and nodded. He rolled up my sleeve where the burning red marks were and gently kissed it in a way only a nine-year old could. He then grinned at me with his missing tooth and said, "Hey, I bet Akito's mommy doesn't love him."

"You're right. I bet she doesn't."

"Hey, want to hear a really cool word I learned?"

"What is it?"

He shrugged. "I dunno. It's a word you use when you're really mad. I heard one of the adults say it to another one of the adults, and they got really mad."

"Ooh, tell me what it is!"

"Okay, but it's a secret." And he told me.

"Use it only when you're really mad, okay?"

I nodded excitedly at the new addition to my vocabulary.

Later that same day I was wandering through the halls of the main estate when one of the maids stopped me. "Yuki, you're mother says that you have to do your homework right now or no dessert for you."

"I don't wanna," I replied shaking my head furiously.

"Come on now, Yuki, don't make a fuss and let's go." She attempted to take my by the hand but I pulled away.

"You insolent little—"

"Fuck you," I said, excited to show off my new phrase. The maid gasped in horror and ran off down the halls, but not before slapping me on the face and asking, "Where did you learn that filthy word?"

"Uh...Akito."

She stopped dead in her tracks. "Oh. Well then. Just don't ever use it again."

"Why doesn't Akito get punished?" I wanted my revenge on the boy who insisted on playing "games" that he always won.

"He's the head of the family. He's special". And she left without another word.

As I sat doing my homework that night, I thought about something. If Akito and I were both special, then why did I get punished and he didn't? Maybe we were special in different ways? Or maybe it was because his mother didn't love him, or the fact that he didn't have more than twenty more years to live that no one could ever punish him.

Reviews would be greatly appreciated and put in the cookie jar!


End file.
